"Morality has its own civil wars, with its own victims in their own time and place."

books:


	• The Secret Scripture Sebastian Barry Viking Adult, 2008 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 8 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

perhaps the best ive read this year

the other reviews have covered it, except I would add that Barry's insights into the nature and functions of memory are profoundly interesting to me as a human being and as a historian. Read it.

"Morality has its own civil wars, with its own victims in their own time and place."

In his distinctly Irish novel, set in County Sligo and Roscommon, a mental institution, a perhaps century old woman, Roseanne Cleary McNulty, pens a diary of her long life, which she hides in her room under the floorboards. Retrieving the notebook only when it's safe, Roseanne reveals a deeply loving relationship with a father who dies far too young and a mother who withdraws over time into the solitude of a troubled mind. Presbyterians, the Cleary's are an anomaly in Catholic Sligo, Joe Cleary dominating the landscape of his daughter's formative years. Reeling from his death and her mother's complete disinterest in the world around her, Roseanne is a naïve young woman, unprepared for what awaits, falling quickly in love with Tom McNulty. Tom and his brothers, and their domineering mother are the faces of the stubborn, loyal Irish rebels who spend their years fighting for independence, closing ranks against outsiders.

Much at work in Roseanne's life is a priest, Father Gaunt, a man invested in his own arrogance and misogyny, who visits his hatred and mistrust of women on the innocent Roseanne. It is through Gaunt's efforts that Roseanne's marriage to Tom is ruined, no one of consequence to protect the girl, left staggering at the blows fate has dealt. Having been institutionalized for over half her life at the time she writes her memoirs, the remarkable thing about this character, as so beautifully rendered by Barry, is her inherent generosity of spirit and disinclination to harsh judgment of those who have wronged her. And while Roseanne is writing of her father and her marriage, Dr. Grene is charged with determining the future placement of his patient, Roscommon soon to be vacated and completely demolished. Unwilling to interrogate a woman whose face still carries the remnants of her exceptional beauty, Grene becomes fascinated by the small details he uncovers, hints that the truth may differ from Roseanne's recollection of her past.

Alternating these two stories (Dr. Grene beset by a terrible personal loss while investigating Roseanne's life), the author reveals an Ireland in turmoil, a beautiful woman caught up in a family enacting their part of that troubled history, cast out by the venality of a priest. It is Roseanne's great tragedy that her striking beauty is wielded as a sword to annihilate her world, her fond recollections of father and husband- at least for a time- the only buffer against the cruelty of the world. Roseanne's story is important because it is her voice, among many, that speaks to the plight of women ill-used by a hypocritically moral society and a Catholic church that has the power to ruin a life with one harsh judgment. Barry delivers an extraordinarily dear character in Roseanne and an empathetic doctor in Grene, setting the stage for a denouement that weaves these two lives intimately together, each in need of solace: "There is something greater than judgment. I think it is called mercy." Luan Gaines/ 2008.

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Superb!

So many novels these days begin well, and then give the impression that the author is thoughtlessly coasting. This book is pure poetry, superbly written, and gripping throughout. An excellent read. A pity that there are no other works by this author on Kindle!

An elegant and intelligent novel of love, murder, betrayal and sacrifice

Growing up in Ireland, during the Great War, golden-haired Roseanne Clear adores her Presbyterian father, Joe, a happy and curious individual who is the "cleanest man in the Christian world, all Sligo anyhow." Her mother, Cissy, is an anxious woman who "suffers strangely under the halo of beauty." The greatest joy of Roseanne's young life is walking with her exotic-looking mother at dusk to meet her father on his way home from a local Catholic cemetery, where he works as superintendent.

But death arrives unannounced at the Clears' doorstep when the Irish troubles come calling at the cemetery. After that dark and disturbing night, Roseanne's young life, and that of her family, changes forever. Shortly afterwards, Father Gaunt, a local priest who has "no antennae for grief," informs Joe that he is to be removed from his job at the cemetery. City officials have found Joe a new job as a rat catcher. The once proud and fastidious caretaker becomes "a living man exiled from the dead."

Following the family's drastic change in circumstances, her father is not the same. After his death and her mother's descent into madness, Roseanne, who is still in her teens, tries to carve out a future for herself. She finds a job, falls in love and marries Tom McNulty, "the decentest man." But her happiness is short-lived, as she eventually ends up in Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital, a place "where sisters, mothers, grandmothers, spinsters, all forgotten, lie."

Half a century later the hospital is on the verge of collapse and slated to be torn down. Before the facility is destroyed, Dr. William Grene, the Senior Psychiatrist who has attended the hospital's patients for more than three decades, has been called upon to assess which patients can be put back into the community and which are to be moved to a new facility. For years he has been inexplicably drawn to Mrs. McNulty, and as the time approaches for the hospital's demolition, he searches to find the reason for her hospitalization.

During her decades in the mental institution, Roseanne has learned the virtue of silence, but she still has good eyesight and a steady hand. While Dr. Grene searches for the truth about her, Roseanne carefully documents her recollections in a manuscript that she hides under a floorboard beneath her bed. As the good doctor unravels the complicated and conflicting accounts of her life, and as she records her memories of the past, they uncover deeply buried and safely guarded secrets, while coming to realize the truth about themselves.

Roseanne, like the Ireland of her birth, is complex and flawed, yet deserving of love and grace. In spite of her dire and tangled circumstances, although neglected and forlorn, her spirit endures and hope prevails.

Acclaimed author Sebastian Barry has written an elegant and intelligent novel of love, murder, betrayal and sacrifice. It's a thought-provoking look at the destructive power of well-intentioned people to destroy lives and the redemptive power of truth to heal, no matter how long it takes.

--- Reviewed by Donna Volkenannt

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The Perfect Summer Read

This is the best book I've read since "The Kite Runner"! Written by an Irish author, it has the expected tragedy and angst, but it's the beauty of the storytelling that lifts this book above so many other "recommended" fiction books I've read this year. It was one of those rare books that kept me ignoring items on my "To Do" list so I could sneak in another chapter before bedtime. Regretfully, it was only 300 pages, which flew by much too quickly. I'm glad I have Barry's "The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty" on hand to turn to next. However, since "The Secret Scripture" included the character of Eneas in the plot, I wish I'd read that book first.

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reviews: page 1, 2

A gorgeous new novel from the author of the Man Booker finalist A Long Long Way

As a young woman, Roseanne McNulty was one of the most beautiful and beguiling girls in County Sligo, Ireland. Now, as her hundredth year draws near, she is a patient at Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital, and she decides to record the events of her life.

As Roseanne revisits her past, hiding the manuscript beneath the floorboards in her bedroom, she learns that Roscommon Hospital will be closed in a few months and that her caregiver, Dr. Grene, has been asked to evaluate the patients and decide if they can return to society. Roseanne is of particular interest to Dr. Grene, and as he researches her case he discovers a document written by a local priest that tells a very different story of Roseanne?s life than what she recalls. As doctor and patient attempt to understand each other, they begin to uncover long-buried secrets about themselves.

Set against an Ireland besieged by conflict, The Secret Scripture is an epic story of love, betrayal, and unavoidable tragedy, and a vivid reminder of the stranglehold that the Catholic Church had on individual lives for much of the twentieth century.

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